For the past three days I’ve been in Columbia doing workshops SCETV. As I’ve done for the past three years, I’ve offered training at various levels in Google Earth. It was a busy three days, and I didn’t have much time to blog during that time. Still, it was a good experience. SCETV always puts on a good training session.
The first day I got up at 4:30 and drove on down so I would be ready for my first session at 8:30, which was an Introduction to Google Earth. The room they had me in was absolutely fantastic – open with views out toward the Columbia skyline. There was a central screen flanked by four large LCD TV’s, and seating was very comfortable Herman Miller Aeleron chairs. The IFRA Newsplex is used by the USC School of Journalism for training, and it’s quite a room.
The sessions went well. As mentioned, the first one was an introduction, and the second was on creating interactive lessons with Google Earth. The third one was on geotagging, and it was held in a very dark conference room in another building. Not only were the attendees about to fall asleep, but so was I.
After the sessions on the first day I went to the Columbia Riverside Park and took lots of photos (post and photos to follow), then to Riverside New Orleans Grill for dinner, then I collapsed at the hotel.
On Wednesday I had been asked to fill in for someone who was doing a session on creating virtual field trips in Google Earth. It turns out that the person who was originally scheduled to do the workshop had downloaded one of my handouts, and was planning to use that. I tried to wing it, but I’m not so sure I did it justice. The other two workshops went very well, though.
Second day dinner was with my friend Dwight and family, then another collapse.
Day three, more of the same. For the final session on geotagging I had 13 people signed up, but only 3 showed up. We did a nice little self-guided study, and it worked out OK. They got lots of individual attention.
I’m thinking that the geotagging workshop may be a bit esoteric, and I’ll probably drop it from my repertoire. The other two got lots of positive feedback. As I had anticipated, the participants were astounded with the ability to embed multimedia components into Google Earth placemarks. There were lots of oohs and aahs.
That was followed by the long drive back up I-26, with a brief diversion to see if the Tip Top Lookout Tower was still standing, which it wasn’t.